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Santa Fe’s Dennis O’Leary: Who Was He?

Wife Lila and I visited the Santa Fe (NM) National Cemetery in June to find the graves of her father and her uncle. I’ll get around to posting that story some other time.

Virtual friend John Gorentz, AKA Spokesrider, combines cycling and historical research. He recently posted about searching for the tombstone of a farmer who knew enough of a local Indian dialect to intervene in a dispute over apple trees in the 1800s.

Indian Graves at Santa Fe National Cemetery

That got me thinking about some photos I took of some tombstones at the Santa Fe National Cemetery. Some of them didn’t have names; some just said “Civilian” or “Navajo” or “Scout.”

This one had a name – Mrs. Butt – and the qualifier, “Apache Woman.”

I did some quick searches and found that a lot of graves had been relocated to the national cemetery from far-flung forts over the years because of neglect and vandalism.

I don’t know if that’s where these came from.

Who was Dennis O’Leary?

While looking for those pictures, I was drawn to some shots of a statue that was near the Indian graves.

It was a very detailed sandstone carving of a young soldier leaning against a log. It is the only statue in the whole cemetery.

Inscribed on the stone

His name: Dennis O’Leary

His rank and unit: Private, Company I, 23rd Infantry

His date of death: April 1, 1901

His age at death: 23 years, 9 (?) months

Eyes staring into nothing for 107 years

When I took the picture, I was haunted by the idea that this very lifelike stone soldier had been staring with lifeless eyes for 107 years.

I wasn’t sure what conflict he was engaged in when he died, but I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to find out. It turns out that there are more questions than answers about Pvt. O’Leary.

Was O’Leary a suicide or a TB victim?

Legend has it he was an unhappy soldier stationed at the remote outpost. He is supposed to have carved the statue in his free time out of sandstone in the mountains not too far from the fort, even engraving the date of his death on the tombstone.

According to the story, he wrote a suicide note describing his carving and its location and asked it be placed over his grave. Then he reportedly shot himself.

Military records, however, show a Pvt. Dennis O’Leary died of tuberculosis at Ft. Wingate on April 1, 1901.

Yet, the legend has persisted ever since the remains of O’Leary and the statue were moved from Ft. Wingate to the Santa Fe National Cemetery in 1911, when the fort was disbanded and all its graves moved here.

If anyone knows the REAL story behind Pvt. O’Leary, the folks at the national cemetery would like to hear it. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask them about the statue.

Bike Content: because we had a lot of ground to cover, I didn’t bring my bike. Santa Fe, with lots of congestion, had lots of cyclists on the streets. They could make as good or better time than the gridlocked cars. Santa Fe was the first place I had ever seen Sharrows in the wild. They seemed to work well.

Interestingly enough, the cemetery has a signboard of prohibitions, which includes “No Sports Activities in Cemetery,” with pictographs of a runner and a bicycle with the “prohibited” slash through them. If you’re using the bike as transportation, not as a “sports activity,” I wonder if they’d bust you?

14 comments to Santa Fe’s Dennis O’Leary: Who Was He?

Sounds interesting, Ken. I did a quick look using ancestry.com’s indexes, but didn’t find any possible matches listed in the 1901 federal census or in any of the military records databases they have. I used the spelling of the name exactly as you gave it, and didn’t try any variations.

I am not familiar with how to research the types of military records that might yield more information, so am not quite sure where to look next. But if the cemetery gets questions about it every day, I’d guess some genealogist who DOES know his/her way around these records would have looked. You never know what questions have gone unanswered because people just haven’t taken the time to look, though.

The cemetery director told me that he was a deserter, he turned himself in and was to be hung, but he hung himself instead….on the date that he had inscribed on his sculpture that he carved while as a deserter!

Hi, Ken. I’m writing a post about Dennis O’Leary for my blog, Futility Closet. May I have your permission to reproduce the second photo above (just below the subhead “Who was Dennis O’Leary?”) if I credit you and link back to your site? Many thanks for your consideration.

i find it impossible for one person to carve his own statue in two weeks (as the article stated he had been missing) and then have the army actually follow the request of a suicide.. but whatever nimble minds wish to believe i guess makes for a good story

There is a Dennis O’Leary listed in the 1850 Federal Census stationed at the Military Base at Santa Fe New Mexico. His birth place is listed as Ireland and his age at 31. The article states he was 23 in 1901 which puts his birth at 1878. The census says lts’ Dennis was 31 in 1850 which puts the birth at 1819.
My bet is he committed suicide. Lt. John Pershing stationed there:“this post is a … and no question – tumbled down, old quarters, though Stots is repairing it as fast as he can. The winters are severe…it is always bleak and the surrounding country is barren absolutely.”